Jersey Shore reunion show: who watched it? Oh my heavens, it’s incredible! I am just getting to it now after coming back from New York, and it’s exactly what I needed after spending four hours on a stuffy bus.

A lot of stuff went down on the show, but the only thing really worth writing about is the long overdue confrontation between Sammi and Ronnie. MTV showed “never before seen” footage where Sammi is seen admitting to The Situation that she enjoys flirting with other guys (despite being “together” with Ronnie) and that she thinks he, The Situation, is “sweet” and a “great guy.” Ronnie watched this footage on the reunion show and interpreted it to mean — correctly, in my view — that Sammi is a two-faced she-devil that can’t be trusted. DUH, Ronnie.

I mean, okay, in the great scheme of things maybe Sammi’s telling The Situation that he’s a sweet guy while he’s perched like a vulture at the end of her bed, ready to swoop in on his twitching prey, shouldn’t be a total dealbreaker for Ronnie and Sammie’s relationship, but then again, maybe it should. That interaction represents Sammi’s whole slimy M.O.: she does what she wants to do, no matter how it affects anyone else, and consequently she isn’t loyal to Ronnie if it’s not convenient or fun for her. Not great girlfriend material. I hope she and Ronnie actually do stay broken up this time. He can do better; as my mom pointed out, he’s a “nice boy.”

The only other (traumatizing) highlight of the reunion show: Snooki and Mike hinting that they might still be hooking up. Horrible… Just horrible.

I’ve learned a lot about love from Jersey Shore. For example, you don’t EVER make fun of your significant other’s toe. That’s a personal issue and it is NOT cool. Second, if your boyfriend didn’t care about you, he’d be out on the boardwalk creeping on some other creature, okay? Third, two people who love each other can occasionally call one another “f***ing disgusting,” “lame as f***” and/or a “stumpy bastard.” It’s called honesty. Try it some time.

Actually, I am seriously considering putting some of these Jersey Shore pearls of wisdom into practice in my own relationship, in the hopes that my boyfriend and I can be as blissfully happy as Ronnie and Sammie (see below).

Oh, Ronnie and Sammi. Theirs is a tragic love story, made all the more tragic by Ronnie’s hair. Sometimes I feel like Aeschylus was a writing consultant on this show. I keep waiting for Mike to stab Ronnie to death, Sammi to murder Ronnie’s mother (how dare she tell Sammi to “fluff up quick”), and Pauly D to throw himself onto the burning funeral pyre. But maybe they’ll just take shots, do some laundry, and things will be cool.

Back to Sammi and Ronnie. Their relationship is characterized by bouts of cuddling interspersed with fights about nothing, followed by table flipping and/or sullen, solo grilling by Ronnie. I guess I shouldn’t say the fights are about nothing. That’s not fair. For example, in the last episode, Ronnie made a playful reference to Sammi’s “Fred Flintstone toe,” and then, obviously, everything went to hell because he had totally crossed the line. He should have known not to attack Sammi as a person like that. As Sammi explained, “it’s the worst thing [he] could possibly do.”

After Ronnie tried to convince Sammi that he cared, to no avail, Ronnie gave up and, inevitably, went into “pure creep mode” to go find some creatures on the boardwalk. Hey, he was left without options. But, once Ronnie got to Karma, he realized that he couldn’t do it. He went back to Sammi and begged for her forgiveness, saying, “I do regret what I did.” Sammi was a big enough person to forgive him.

Things soon fell apart again, though, when Ronnie and Sammi got into a confrontation the next night with some guy on the boardwalk who was harassing them about being from New York. Ronnie tried to defend Sammi’s honor, but she insisted on “Italianizing” the situation, which I think means antagonizing someone in a Long Island accent. Sammi kept engaging with the other guy and his girlfriend, while Ronnie tried to defuse the situation, and eventually Ronnie shoved her to get her to shut her mouth. Reasonable. Then Ronnie got in a pretty intense looking fight with the other guy (“Come at me, bro!”) while Sammi walked away.

After Ronnie kicked the living crap out of the other guy, Sammi then tried to weasel back into Ronnie’s good graces, and for a few brief moments, I thought Ronnie was going to come to his senses and break it off with her. Somehow, though, the world turned topsy-turvy again and the episode ended with Ronnie begging for Sammi’s forgiveness while she sobbed and told him that he had “traumatized” her. The episode closed with moody alt-rock and this observation from Ronnie: “I have the best girl in Seaside, and I don’t wanna mess this up.”

Huh. I think a quote from Henry Louis Mencken is appropriate here: “Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.” Good luck, Ronnie.